Possible TikTok Ban May Intensify Ideological Confrontation Between the US and China

A phone showing the TikTok logo is placed on a computer motherboard in this illustration, on February 23, 2023. (Dado Ruvic/Reuters)

President Joe Biden signed a bill on April 24 that could potentially ban TikTok unless its parent company, ByteDance, divests it to a U.S. company. The swift passage of the bill highlights the escalating ideological confrontation between the United States and China.

TikTok, with 170 million registered users in the United States, has been accused of aiding the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) propaganda efforts. Lawmakers across the aisle have expressed concerns that the CCP could force ByteDance to hand over data on the 170 million Americans who use TikTok.

The bill, Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA), was passed overwhelmingly in the House of Representatives on April 20, with a vote of 360 to 58. Following this, the Senate passed a significant $95 billion foreign aid package on April 23, which included provisions to divest or ban TikTok. Mr. Biden signed the legislation the following day.

Censoring for the CCP

TikTok’s algorithm allegedly served the CCP’s propaganda efforts on many occasions in the past.

In 2019, during the height of the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests, “#hongkong” on Twitter yielded numerous videos of the protests and police brutality. However, searching for Hong Kong on TikTok presented a peaceful city filled with coffee, food, and shopping, leading to censorship suspicions.

That same year, TikTok banned the account of New Jersey teenager Feroza Aziz after she exposed China’s “re-education camps” for the ethnic Uighur population, where they were subjected to torture and daily indoctrination with CCP propaganda.

In 2020, TikTok reportedly censored topics such as Tiananmen protests, Tibetan independence, and Falun Gong. According to the BBC, information about Falun Gong, which was banned in China, was completely forbidden on TikTok. At the same time, information about relations between Taiwan, Tibet, and China, as well as Tiananmen Square, was usually marked as “visible to self.”

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TikTok officially launched in the United States in 2018 and became the most downloaded app globally in 2020, 2021, and 2022. Even Mr. Biden’s reelection campaign joined TikTok in February to engage with the younger generation.

TikTok Founder

In 2018, after one of his products was sanctioned by the CCP, TikTok founder Zhang Yiming publicly apologized to the CCP and pledged allegiance to the party, stating that “core socialist values must guide technology.“ He promised the company would promote the CCP and would push ”core socialist values education” to all employees.

On May 12, 2023, former senior executive Yintao Yu of ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, revealed in a lawsuit filed in California that the CCP had a special committee within ByteDance with access to all of the company’s data, including data stored in the United States.

Michael Sobolik, senior fellow in Indo-Pacific Studies at the American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC) and author of the book “Countering China’s Great Game: A Strategy for American Dominance,” said, “TikTok is not just a technological concern, it is not just a social media problem, TikTok is today China’s greatest asymmetric advantage against America.”

He further warned, “It represents the most immediate threat to American democracy that the Chinese Communist Party poses.”

Larry Kudlow, a former director of the National Economic Council, pointed out that TikTok is another example of CCP infiltration as part of its ongoing war to dominate the United States and the rest of the world.

Expanding Propaganda Wars

According to Freedom House’s 2020 report on China’s external propaganda influence titled “Beijing’s Global Megaphone,” in 2009, the Chinese regime allocated $6 billion to expand its propaganda media globally.

In 2017, American scholar David Shambaugh estimated that China spent up to $10 billion annually to enhance its “soft power.” The CCP’s six major media outlets have now established a global presence, including China Global Television Network (CGTN), China Central Television (CCTV), China Daily, People’s Daily, China Radio International (CRI), Xinhua News Agency, and China News Service.

China Daily is currently distributed on newsstands in New York City and in congressional offices in Washington.

The CCP also uses social media to manipulate public opinion. In Oct. 2019, Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey expressed support for the Hong Kong protesters on Twitter, leading to nearly 170,000 threatening tweets targeting Mr. Morey. The tweets were suspected to originate from China.

However, none of the CCP’s propaganda media and fake Facebook accounts can be compared to the influence of TikTok, which is now one of the world’s major social media platforms.

Conflicting Worldviews

In recent years, tensions between the United States and China have escalated. Andrei Lungu, president of the Romanian Institute for the Study of Asia-Pacific (RISAP), pointed out in an article that the conflict between the United States and China ultimately stems from ideology.

He wrote, “At the top of the PRC’s core interests weren’t rocks in the sea or even Taiwan, it was the safeguarding of its CCP-led political system. The greatest threat against the PRC wasn’t geopolitical but ideological.”

In Oct. 2013, China’s PLA National Defense University produced a video titled “Silent Contest” about the behind-the-scenes struggle between China and the United States. It argued that the collapse of the Soviet Union was due to the United States inciting a “peaceful evolution.” The propaganda video examined U.S.-China relations from this perspective and accused the United States of attempting to eliminate the CCP in the same way.

In the “silent contest” between the United States and China, TikTok has become a favorable pawn in the hands of the CCP as it surged to become one of the most popular social media apps.

In Aug. 2023, Senator Jim Risch (R-Idaho) said, “There is no question American values do not align with those of the Chinese Communist Party. U.S. failure to act could very well result in our own battle to correct the CCP propaganda spread by an app that is nothing more than a thinly-disguised indoctrination machine. It is time for this administration to take action against TikTok. The U.S. must send a strong message to China: your influence is not welcome here.”